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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

PLA Navy uses new generation of marine geo-information system

Interesting news from PLAdaily today, makes you wonder how many "civilian survey ships" PLAN used in order to build this new system.

PLA Navy uses new generation of marine geo-information system

english.chinamil.com.cn 2009-06-23

The reporters saw at the China Nautical Book Publisher that with the input of relevant marine environmental data by the operator, a new generation of marine geo-information system can automatically generate a piece of digitalized multi-media nautical chart.

With the bird's-eye-view charts, sea-lane traffic charts and seabed relief charts of various perspectives offered by the system in real time, the various postures of maritime battle field, military strength, sea routes and the attacking objectives will vividly come into view of the commanders. With such elements as depth of water, current speed and direction of current offered by the system, the missile and torpedo can directly aim at and implement precision attack on the targets, effectively improving ship survival capability and the attack accuracy of the ship-based weapons.

It is said that since the system started operation, it has successfully supported such major missions as Chinese naval warships' global navigations, formation visits and escorting operations in the waters off the Somali coast and become an important part of the information-based technical support system of the PLA Navy.

The new generation of the marine geo-information system is composed of 20 sub-systems including information collection and processing, digital nautical chart drawing up and production of digital nautical chart of international standard.

The database of the system has collected various technical documents, standards, calculation materials, achievement drawings of the PLA Navy and the civilian departments in the process of oceanic investigation, measurement and oceanic drafting since the founding of the People's Republic of China and the domestic and foreign marine environmental materials over the years in such aspects as hydrology, meteorology, navigation, magnetism, gravity and satellite remote-sensing.

The digital nautical charts offered by the system can display the real object images of various above-water and under-water dangerous elements in long voyage in real time and can guide the ships to safely evade the dangers with the help of the voice prompt.

While assisting the ships to realize automatic navigation, positioning and operation in long voyage, the system can also assemble thousands of digital nautical charts within the scope of the whole world to offer an optimal interface and platform for human-machine interaction.